Ezekiel 37 : 1-14 John 11 : Sermon

Transcription

1 Ezekiel 37 : 1-14 John 11 : Sermon Who is the saddest character in the bible? That may sound like a strange question to ask at the beginning of sermon, but it is an interesting one. Elie Wiesel, the Jewish philosopher and concentration camp survivor, tells of having such a debate with some experts on the book. When you think about it there are no shortage of candidates for such a title. What about Adam for a start? Being thrown out of Eden for one mistake can't exactly help you to have a bright and cheery personality. Someone suggested Moses. He led his people through the weary wilderness, listening to all their complaints, only to arrive at the edge of the Promised Land after 40 years to be told that he would not be allowed to enter into it. Job is another candidate whose name inevitably came up. His story begins with him losing his wife and children, as well as his house, his possessions his health and his reputation. Then he has to put up with a group of friends trying to convince him it is all his fault. Someone also suggested Mary. Having to watch your son mistreated and misunderstood, arrested and tortured and killed publicly on a cross must be up there on any list of sad experiences. However Elie Wiesel himself suggested another name. He suggests that the saddest character we read of in the entire bible is in fact God. Throughout the whole long and varied story that unfolds through the scripture God is forever calling people to do good, to know that they are loved and therefore to love one another. All the commandments, all the words of the prophets, even the creation story itself, speak of a God with loving intent offering his people everything that they need. Yet throughout the whole story, he has to watch people react with disobedience and rivalry and jealousy and greed and violence. It builds to its climax in our Easter season when all of these things become personified in the person of Jesus, who consistently does what is loving and good and generous and healing, but who is treated with such contempt and hatred and violence. It may not be the way we normally think of him, but the evidence of scripture

2 suggests that God, if he cares at all, would have plenty of reason to be deeply sad. Of course the power of the story that we find in the bible is that it is not simply telling a story of what happened in a particular time frame time, it is a book which speaks timeless truths about our human condition. And so the causes of divine suffering that we read of there have not come to an end, but actually continue down through the centuries, as he watches people he loves, people he has such high hopes for, people he has given his all for, continue to struggle and fight and hurt one another, and as if to make things worse, often claiming to do it in his name. So is God the saddest character in the bible? Well if that is even close to being true, then it becomes all the more remarkable that the picture of him that we have in the same book is of one who remains patient and positive, holding out hope to humanity even the bleakest situations. We get two such pictures this morning. In the first, Ezekiel tells of being led out by the Spirit of God to view a valley. Valleys can be peaceful and tranquil places, but they can also be dark and dangerous. Certainly dangerous seems an apt word here, where the description given suggests that an army has been ambushed and slaughtered is it passed through a valley, their bodies left for so long that only the bones remain. This would have been a scandalous way to treat even your enemies. So the scene that is described is about as bleak as anything it is possible to imagine. Yet when Ezekiel observes that scene, that vision, it must have reflected they way he was already feeling. He was living as a Priest among a defeated people who had lost everything and whose God seemed to have done nothing to protect them. It was his job to keep hope alive but what hope could he possibly find? The vision which the Spirit of the Lord gives him challenges him to believe that despite everything had happened, despite all of the suffering and death that he has lives through, God was still around with power to bring about good. The scale of the suffering in the New Testament passage may be smaller, but it is also more focussed and personal. There we read of Jesus weeping along with others at the death of his friend. This incident has often been used in theological debate to proof that Jesus was fully human, not just

3 some sort of divine being who took on a human appearance. I want to suggest it is in fact evidence of his divine nature, giving us a glimpse of how the creator feels each time we experience loss and pain. And what could look more bleak than a sealed tomb surrounded by grieving friends. But again the presence of God in the scene, this time in the person of Jesus, leads to hope and transformation. Indeed the story of Jesus own suffering is one that would, in the power of God, end with resurrection. Be it a valley in the shadow of death, or a tomb that seems to contain nothing but death, or a blood soaked wooden cross on a hill,god is described as being there, working to restore and to bring about good. This we believe to be the same God we trust in today, waiting to be discovered even when life takes on it bleakest appearance. Well there is an obvious question here. If God is so concerned why do we not see him at work more often? Why does he not stop these situations even before they occur? Or are these old stories so disconnected from reality that they carry no power? I read about a woman called Mary in a place where I did not expect to find such stories. It is recounted in a book about politics and faith by the American politician Madelaine Albright. Mary lived in a mainly Christian village in Lebanon during the 1980s, when her homeland was victim of many invasions and battles. On one occasion her village came under attack from armed militia. The young people fled but Mary tripped over a root and when she looked up she saw young soldier pointing a gun at her. Her told her to renounce cross or die. She told him that she was born a Christian and would die as a Christian. He pressed the gun to her neck and pulled the trigger, then carved out a cross on her chest with his bayonet before leaving her to die. When the soldiers returned to occupy the village the next day they found her where she had fallen, still alive but paralised. Yet instead of killing her they made a stretcher and carried her to the nearest hospital. That is where a charity worker met her and heard her story. He pointed out what we might be thinking, that her story doesn't make sense. Why would people treat her so cruelly one day and try to help her the next? Her only explanation was sometimes bad people are taught to

4 do good things. She went on to say that she had forgiven the man who pulled the trigger. Again it was pointed out to her that this was not a logical response, but she could only say my God has forgiven me and therefore I must forgive others it is as simple as that. Well it doesn't sound simple to me, but something in her allowed her to do that, and the way she acted made an impact on those around her. Her faith taught bad people to do good things. Faith in God can lead some people to be ready to kill, we know that all too well. But her story testifies that faith can also lead to forgivenesses and reconciliation, that it can bring about change even in situations where that are so incredibly difficult that most of us would call it impossible. Here, I believe, is the vital connection between ancient stories of hope that we read in the bible and the often hopeless situations that confront us in the world today. It is the element of human choice. Mary had to choose to do what we might call the godly thing, to forgive her enemy, even though that seemed irrational and senseless. Just as Ezekiel had to stand up and prophesy to the dry bones, even when that looked like behaviour crazy enough to get him locked up in a padded cell. Just as Jesus disciples had to roll away the stone which sealed Lazarus' tomb even when they feared the terrible stench of death and decay. In each situation, and in how many situations ever since, people acted in faith and the outcome has been a witness to the power of God, whose love is so great that he cannot bring himself to leave us alone in our despair and hopelessness. The ancient stories need not be disconnected from our reality for when we are willing to act in faith willing to become part of the story of what God is doing among his people we discover that his power can still flow through us, to change us, and to change those around us, and ever so gradually, change our world. It is still possible to have faith and to find hope and to see transformation. The danger is always that, before we get round to acting on it, our hope and our faith wither and die within us. The danger is that we lose our ability to do what we know is right because we have lost the belief that it can ever be worthwhile. The danger is that the hurt and fear and frustration that we experience will suffocate the hope and the faith that we

5 at least vaguely sense, until they become so weak that we no longer pay attention to them. That is why we need to keep hearing the old stories of faith, and to keep hearing the ever new stories of faith, so that we can be part of the story. To learn to trust in the God who remains so patiently with us, and live out that trust in all sorts of situations. May the same Spirit of God that we read of from the past, enable us to do that today.